Jeffrey Gibson

Sorry, Jay but bringing Plato in to prove that the Greeks had no understanding of the non existence of a thing is just rubbish, since contrary to what you are claiming, he himself shows that he is quite aware of things not existing, not only in his discussions of the existence of the Homeric Gods (these beings, as they are described and portrayed by Homer, could not exist), but in the Apology, when he reports that a point that "Socrates" raises when he tells his friend that death is not to be feared since there is very real possibility the those who die "are nothing (mêdén)" and that death means that he will cease to exist, as well as in the Phaedo where the soul's ceasing to exist is not only spoken of, but envisaged as a very real possibility that has to be argued against -- and notably not on the basis that non being is an absurdity.

Jeffrey

PhilosopherJay

Hi Malachi151,

Regarding the subject of non-existence, it seems to me that the question of the ability of the ancient Greco-Roman world to talk about heroes not existing can be divided into three areas: 1) concept of non-existence, 2) non-existence of the soul after death, and 3) non-existence of Gods. I'll briefly discuss each one.

1) Concept of Non-Existence

As noted, Plato’s “The Sophist” is the key text here. It points out how influential Parmenides dictum that one can’t speak or even think about non-existence was. We may take it that there was a certain amount of debate over non-existence in the early fifth century which prompted Parmenides censorious statement about it (circa 485 B.C.E.). Plato’s lead character in the dialogue, the Eleatic Stranger, points out that sophists used this statement to promote the idea that no falsehood could exist. By so doing, he categorically links non-existence to falsehood and sophistry. He suggests that non-existence exists within existence as the difference between what a thing really is and how it is falsely described or painted. Accordingly, we may account that non-existence was conceptually synonymous with false description in Plato. Given Plato’s enormous influence in the ancient world, we may take this as the basic concept of non-existence that intellectuals would employ Post-Plato.

2) Death of the Soul

Let us take a look at how Plato describes death and not-being in the Apology

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?

Socrates/Plato compares nothingness to a dreamless sleep. This is certainly an odd analogy to make when one is talking about nothingness. After a dreamless sleep, one can wake up and feel again, but after becoming nothing, one cannot do this. This is a really odd picturing of nothingness. Nothingness means simply unconsciousness or non-awareness here. So, in this dialogue, which is generally considered to be early and written many years before the Sophist, Plato mentions/refers to non-being, but gives it the odd meaning of simple unconsciousness.

Here is Thomas Jefferson's interesting 1808 commentary on the passage (http://www.friesian.com/apology.htm):

Even Jefferson sees that we are getting merely the word "nothingness,” but it is being conceptualized as something; i.e., dreamless sleep.

In the "Phaedo," Socrates repeats several times his idea that death is a separation of body and soul.

Quote:

Do we believe that there is such a thing as death? To be sure, replied Simmias. And is this anything but the separation of soul and body? And being dead is the attainment of this separation; when the soul exists in herself, and is parted from the body and the body is parted from the soul-that is death?

After defining his definition of death as separation of soul and body, as something true philosophers believe, Socrates goes on to describe his future after-death adventures of souls. At this point Cebes breaks in

Note that Cebes is talking about what men “fear”. He uses the imagery of smoke or (a puff of) air that expands or evaporates and vanishes. We see it and then we don’t..

Socrates answers by proving that death is just another state of living. He suggests along the way that the living are born from the dead and the dead from the living.

Much later in the dialogue, two other after-death descriptions are given in opposition to Socrates.

Quote:

In this respect, replied Simmias:--Suppose a person to use the same argument about harmony and the lyre--might he not say that harmony is a thing invisible, incorporeal, perfect, divine, existing in the lyre which is harmonized, but that the lyre and the strings are matter and material, composite, earthy, and akin to mortality? And when some one breaks the lyre, or cuts and rends the strings, then he who takes this view would argue as you do, and on the same analogy, that the harmony survives and has not perished--you cannot imagine, he would say, that the lyre without the strings, and the broken strings themselves which are mortal remain, and yet that the harmony, which is of heavenly and immortal nature and kindred, has perished--perished before the mortal. The harmony must still be somewhere, and the wood and strings will decay before anything can happen to that. The thought, Socrates, must have occurred to your own mind that such is our conception of the soul; and that when the body is in a manner strung and held together by the elements of hot and cold, wet and dry, then the soul is the harmony or due proportionate admixture of them. But if so, whenever the strings of the body are unduly loosened or overstrained through disease or other injury, then the soul, though most divine, like other harmonies of music or of works of art, of course perishes at once, although the material remains of the body may last for a considerable time, until they are either decayed or burnt. And if any one maintains that the soul, being the harmony of the elements of the body, is first to perish in that which is called death, how shall we answer him?

Here death is being compared to a harmony becoming unharmonious. It is something heard that is pleasant and correct, but it changes into something unpleasant and incorrect.
After the soul-as-harmony analogy, there is a soul-as-coat-weaver analogy.


Socrates answers the harmony question (which he relates to the Theban Goddess Harmonia) by basically saying that the harmony (or song) is more powerful than the instrument that she is played on.

The second question he calls Cadmus, perhaps referring to the wedding of Harmonia and Cadmus (founder of Thebes) wherein the three graces/charities, daughters of Zeus, wove a dress for Harmonia and says, “You are raising a tremendous question, Cebes, involving the whole nature of generation and corruption.”

He explains how he came to considering investing things through the mind better than seeking material causes, he notes, “I am very far from admitting that he who contemplates existences through the medium of thought, sees them only 'through a glass darkly,' any more than he who considers them in action and operation.”

Socrates then gives his theory of forms, that the things of thing world participate in the the absolute. The soul brings life, therefore having life, it cannot participate in death. The soul is therefore immortal.

Thus, through the theory of forms, Socrates/Plato abolishes death and grants all human beings immortality, which is eternal being. Death/non-existence is a falsehood.

The immortality of the soul becomes the cornerstone of Platonic Philosophy. As Socrates says in the Phaedrus, “The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal.”

In Phaedrus, he also explains the fall of the immortal soul into the human body.

So for Plato the only difference between a God and a man is that the latter had a bad horse. when he was a soul in heaven.

After the body dies, Plato has a judgement of the soul:


Plato makes the soul immortal and eliminates the idea of non-existence for the soul. Since post-Plato the concept of non-existence has disappeared into the concept of falsehood and it has disappeared entirely with humans or at least their souls, perhaps we can find it with the Gods.

3) Non-existence and the Gods.

Cicero’s “Nature of the Gods” is the key text here. The text claims to be a discussion between the representatives of the three most popular schools of philosophy during Cicero’s time. Vellius represents the Epicureans, Q. Lucilius Balbous represents the Stoics and Cotta represents the Academicians or the skeptical Platonists. What is interesting is that all three groups agree that the Gods exist. The only question is over their nature. The Epicureans see the stories of the Gods as allegorical, while the Stoics take them more literally. The Platonists hold a sceptical middle position.

In the text, only two men are named as atheists, Theodorus of Cyrene and Diagoras the Melian. However no argument by them are given. Apparently, both men were subject to legal penalties for what they wrote. However, it is not at all clear that they actually wrote anything denying the existence of any Gods. It is probable that they were accused of denying the existence of Gods, as was Socrates, for political reasons. Since their alleged atheistic arguments were never repeated in any work, even to refute them or to show how poor their arguments were, it is clear either that they never wrote arguments against the existence of the gods or there were penalties for discussing such arguments.

We find that, although the nature of the existence of the gods can be debated openly, the fact of their existence cannot be.

I believe that we can conclude that in the ancient world, Post-Plato, the concept of non-existence disappeared into the concept of falsity, it could not be applied to humans or at least their souls, and it could not be openly applied to Gods.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Incidentally, I hope your book is coming along well. Could you please give me the names of your previous books and where I may purchase them?

[/QUOTE]

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, Jay .. what you quote above is not from a commentary by Thomas Jefferson and it's not about Apology 40c where Socrates speaks about the dead going to "nothing". It's from a commentary by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College, Van Nuys, California. Moreover, and more importantly, you conveniently overlook the fact that immediately preceding the quote you attribute to Jefferson, and specifically with reference to 40c, Ross notes:


Do you enjoy shooting yourself in the foot? You must, since you are doing an awful lot of it latetly.

Here's a suggestion, Jay. Post for us the comments on 40c made by such experts in Platonic philosophy and on the Apology as J. Burnet in his Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito, Michael C. Stokes in his Plato: Apology. With an Introduction, Translation and Commentary and E. De Strycker, S. R. Slings in their Plato's Apology of Socrates. A Literary and Philosophical Study with a Running Commentary and by Brickhouse and Smith in their Socrates on Trial.

Jeffrey

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

It is always nice to have students who will go over your work and correct minor grammatical errors or find trivial mistakes such as incorrect attributions. Traditionally students are given extra credit for such things, so it is always a pleasure to find a student who is willing to do this kind of mindless donkey work without compensation.

On the other hand, students should not cite authors and works that they do not read and understand. It may appear to make them seem more knowledgeable, but when the actual test comes, when they must actually explain the meaning of a passage and not just cite irrelevant lists of names and works, they inevitably fail.

Note Ludwig Wittenstein's association of the use of words and rules:

Source: Wittgenstein's Lectures, 1932 - 35, Edited by Alice Ambrose, publ. Blackwell, 1979. The 1932-33 Lecture notes, pp2 - 40 reproduced here. see http://www.marxists.org/reference/su...t/wittgens.htm

If Plato uses a word that may be translated as "nothing" but then describes the state of unconsciousness, we cannot say that he is talking about non-being as it is commonly understood. Bishop Berkeley might say that everything is nothing to an unconcsious person, but even he would not say that an unconsciousness person is nothing.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Ben C Smith

I did not realize Jeffrey had signed up as one of your students. In fact, I am having fun right now imagining what that teacher-student relationship would look like.

Ben.

Jeffrey Gibson

[QUOTE]Your attribution of an irrelevant and selective quote to Jefferson was hardly a trivial mistake, especially since its not the fisrt time you've done it. It attest to your inability to get things right and to cite relevant material, not to mention your tendency to use selective quotation and to your lack of reading competency. And why you would think that a work from 1808 should be taken as well informed and authoritative and up to date Platonic scholarship, let alone more authoritative and informed an up to date Platonic scholarship than Burnet, etc. -- whose works on the Apology it is evident you haven't read -- is beyond me.

You mean like the (non existent) commentary on the Apology 40c by Thomas Jefferson?

And is the fact that you didn't cite the standard commentators, but only something that you found on the internet, show that you haven't understood Burnet & Co, even if (as seems highly doubtful) you had read them?

May be? Do you have a better translation? If you do, on what evidentiary basis do you claim its better?

But is Plato/Socrates describing a state of unconsciousness, let alone one that he thinks is what death actually is? Or is he just using an anlaogy to illustrate why death should not be regarded as something bad, something to be feared (as a bringer of pain). Does he acknowledg that this state is something from which one will eventually ake up as one must do to recognize that a dreamless sleep is something good?

More importantly, is you claim of what Socrates is saying (and what Plato is proclaiming) about the "non-nothingness" of death something that any other commentators on the Apology -- and particular such commentators as Burnet and Co -- support?

A more important question to ask is whether he would say that someone dead is in a state of unconscious, let alone that a dead person is something (i.e., exists), not to mention how anything that Berkeley might say is determinitive for what Plato is saying about death at Apology 40c.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

[QUOTE=Ben C Smith;5083289]If I had, I would have, after seeing both the sort of "teaching" he presents here as authoritative and well informed and how he misrepresents and misreads the sources that he adduces in support of it, I would have withdrawn from his course and asked for my money back.

Jeffrey

Solitary Man

There's always recourse to the chair of the department. :wave:

Jeffrey Gibson

Let's leave Plato for a while (though not before noting that Burnet says not only that at Apology 40c Socrates envisages death as extinction, but that this view "was no doubt that of the majority of the judges, so far as they had thought about the subject at all" --Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito, p. 166). and have a look at some evidence from Aristotle.

I'd be very grateful, Jay, if you'd tell me how you'd maintain your claim that the Greeks had no idea of non being or of death entailing a person' absolute extinction in the light of Aristotle's remarks about death in Nic.Ethic, 1115 a 1:

Perhaps you can produce remarks from an actual expert on Aristotle and/or standard commentary on the Nichomean Ethics that show how this text is not clear evidence against your claim. But if you do, will you please insure that the remark is on topic and that it really comes from the person you attribute it to?

Jeffrey

PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

I readily grant my total inability to teach anything to him.

When I say "student" I am just referring to behavior that can only be compared to a certain type of student; a student who will not get the main idea of a hypothesis but will insist on an hypothesis being wrong because of some triviality about or technicality about it.

In this case, Mel (I do not like using real names in arguments that are non-serious as this one is) ignored dozens of pertinent points in my argument in order to raise the objection that Plato had used the term "nothing" in a certain way in some texts. Let us call that a trivial objection in the first degree.

I read the texts and found the objection worthless. After doing a quick google, I found enough information to assure myself that the objection actually was worthless. One of the sites that demonstrated the problem with the objection was at http://www.friesian.com/apology.htm. When I scrolled to the top of the page to quickly scribble down the name of the author, I was surprised to see only the name Thomas Jefferson there. "That's interesting," I thought, "I did not not know that Jefferson had an interest in philosophy." Still, as the founder of the University of Virginia, I did not think it unreasonable to suppose that he had taken an interest in the subject. I know that his compatriot Thomas Paine wrote a masterful text on the Bible.

The fact that the text actually comes from Dr. Kelly L. Ross, Philosophy Professor from Los Angeles Valley College, and not Jefferson does not really matter. It is the point that the text makes that is important. nevertheless Mel makes a big deal out of it. Let us call this trivial objection in the second degree.

When I point out the trivial nature of the objection, Mel makes another trivial argument and insists on its seriousness. Let us call this trivial objection in the third degree.

Mel, also goes back to his first degree trivial objection and cites Ross' text and accuses me, in a second degree trivial objection, of overlooking the text.

Now, in selecting quotes, one does not really want to quote passages that need detailed explanation. One could ask why does Socrates accept the "possibility of the nothingness"? Is it to genuinely consider it? Of course, not. It is to trash the possibility the instant he raises it. This is what Ross recognizes in the important next passage which I did quote, in which he says "what seems at first to be Nothing actually turns out to be Being itself."

So we may quickly dismiss Mel's trivial objections here, both first and second degree.

Mel continues with an objection that goes beyond third degree to fourth degree trivial objection. He claims that I have not gathered support for my claim from Burnett and Co. But it is up to him to read Burnett and present the case that Burnett disagrees with me, if he believes that Burnett disagrees with me.

A final remark about Berkeley mystifies me and seems to suggest that he did not get the joke that I was making about Berkeley.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay