Conclusiones

Daniel C. Russell

Although Aristotle ( Nicomachean Ethics VII) made akrasia the standard term in ancient (and modern) discussions of acting against one’s better judgement, Plato more often writes of doing wrong willingly or know-ingly ( hekôn ) as opposed to doing so unwill-ingly or unknowunwill-ingly ( akôn ). Like Aristotle, though, Plato recognized a problem in explaining how such a thing is possible.

Plato characterizes akrasia (or rather akrateia , as he calls it at Timaeus 86d) as voluntarily acting badly against one’s bet-ter judgement due to being overcome by a desire, despite being able to do otherwise.

Consider someone who voluntarily overeats despite meaning to stick to a diet. One might characterize his behaviour as akratic – a breakdown between judgement and choice – and then explain how such breakdowns occur. Alternatively, perhaps characteriza-tion is mistaken and the behaviour should be explained in some other way. Plato appears to have taken each of these approaches in different places.

In some dialogues Plato rejects the pos-sibility of akrasia on the grounds that there is no opposition between such motivating forces as practical reason and desire (q.v.).

In the Protagoras , Socrates puts forward the thesis that no one does wrong wittingly.

Whereas most people think that knowledge is often ‘dragged around’ by desire ‘as if it were a slave’, Socrates suggests that ‘knowledge is a fine thing capable of ruling a person’ and that ‘if someone were to know what is good and bad, then he would not be forced by any-thing to act otherwise than knowledge dic-tates’ ( Prt . 352c). Socrates’ argument for this thesis focuses on pleasure: what we desire

is pleasure, and to judge that something is better or worse is to judge that it is more pleasant or less pleasant, respectively; so since practical reason (in the form of either knowledge or belief, 358b–c) and desire have the same targets, they do not oppose each other. Apparent cases of akrasia must really be cases of ignorance that one is doing the worse thing.

Since desire has the same target as practi-cal reason, desire must always seek what is good, that is, beneficial for one. That is, no one does wrong willingly:

Now, no one goes willingly toward the bad or what he believes to be bad; nei-ther is it in human nature, so it seems, to desire to go toward what one believes to be bad instead of to the good. And when he is forced to choose between one of two bad things, no one will choose the greater if he is able to choose the lesser.

(358d)

Earlier in Prt . Socrates declared it ‘unedu-cated’ to suppose ‘that any human being willingly makes a mistake or willingly does anything wrong or bad’; rather, educated persons know ‘very well that anyone who does anything wrong or bad does so involun-tarily’ (345d–e). Similarly, in Meno (77a–8a) Socrates argues that if people did bad things knowing them to be bad, then they would know that such things were harmful for them and thus would make them miserable and unhappy. But since nobody desires to be miserable and unhappy, anyone who desires what is in fact bad must mistakenly believe that that thing is beneficial for him. Likewise, responding to Callicles who espouses akrasia in Gorgias , Socrates says that ‘no one does what’s unjust because he desires to’, but that ‘all who do so do it unwillingly’ ( Grg . 509e). This, he says, is because we desire to

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132 do only those things that benefit us: ‘when one desires some act for the sake of some end, that end must be something beneficial for one, since when one learns that an act would be harmful for one, one stops desiring it’ (467c–8c). The denial of akrasia – often called the ‘Socratic paradox’ – rests on the idea that what desire seeks is also what prac-tical reason seeks, so that there can be no opposition between them.

Elsewhere, however, Plato argues that desire does not seek what practical reason seeks. In Republic , Socrates famously divides the soul (q.v.) into ‘reason’, ‘spirit’ and ‘appetite’, and argues that whereas reason and spirit seek what is beneficial, appetite (not distinguished from desire) does not ( R . 437b–41c). Indeed, Socrates compares spirit and reason to a lion and a tamer united against appetite, depicted as a hydra (588b–90d). On this view, one can desire to do what one judges to be bad, as when Leontius succumbed to a desire to look at corpses (439e–40b). Likewise, in Phaedrus (237d–8c) Plato depicts reason as a charioteer with one noble and obedi-ent horse (spirit) and one ugly, disobediobedi-ent horse (appetite/desire) that is deaf to reason and occasionally gets its way. And in Sophist , Plato distinguishes going wrong out of igno-rance from going wrong out of vice, that is, a ‘discord’ between ‘beliefs and desires, anger and pleasures, reason and pains’ ( Sph . 228b).

In these dialogues, apparently one can desire what reason judges to be bad for one, mak-ing akrasia possible.

However, in yet other dialogues Plato seems to hold both that akrasia is possi-ble and that no one does wrong willingly.

In Laws , the Athenian says that there can be discord between one’s ‘feelings of pleas-ure and pain and [one’s] rational judgment’

( Lg . 689a), and that while some people are

‘immoderate’ due to ignorance, some are so

due to ‘lack of self-control’ (734b). (Although 644d–5b also seems to suggest that the soul is divided into parts, Bobonich 1994 has challenged this; see Gerson 2003 for a reply.) Yet the Athenian also says that ‘every unjust man is unjust against his will’, since no one willingly embraces things that are harmful for him in his ‘most precious part’ (731c; see also 860d–4c; Philebus 22b). The Athenian brings these two thoughts together by saying that succumbing to akrasia is succumbing to doing what one does not really desire to do ( Lg . 863d–e; see also Clitomachus 407d).

But this is puzzling: if to act against practi-cal reason is to do what one does not really desire to do, then how can desire also lead one to act against practical reason?

Some help may come from Ti ., where it is said that a corrupted person has excessive desires but is not willingly in such a condi-tion ( Ti . 86b–7b). Perhaps Plato’s thought is that in its uncorrupted condition desire seeks what practical reason seeks, and that ‘will-ingly’ must be understood in terms of desire in its uncorrupted condition. So akrasia is the result of a corrupted condition, which is bad for one, and no one is ‘willingly’ in that cor-rupt condition. Moreover, since wrongdoing is bad for the one who does it, it follows that no one does wrong ‘willingly’.

Many scholars believe that Plato denied the possibility of akrasia (when he did) on the grounds that desire is a species of practi-cal reason (e.g. Penner 1991), a view often called ‘Socratic intellectualism’; but there is no consensus on this point (e.g. Brickhouse and Smith 2007; Devereux 1995). Moreover, the apparent shifts in Plato’s thinking on akrasia and the nature of the soul have been central to modern debates about the unity (or otherwise) of Plato’s philosophy across his career (e.g. Annas 1999:ch. 6; Vlastos 1991a:48, 86–91).

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133 ANTILOGY AND ERISTICS (ERISTIC)

Menahem Luz

Antilogy ( antilogia ) is an ancient concept mentioned as early as Herodotus (VIII.77, IX.88) and etymologically corresponding to the English term ‘contradiction’ ( anti = con-tra, logia = diction), but broader in scope with a secondary meaning of ‘dispute’ or ‘gainsay’

where no formal contradiction is implied.

Although the art of antilogical contradic-tion ( antilogikê technê ) was occasionally employed by Socrates in order to disprove a mistaken opinion ( Theaetetus 197a), the art of ‘antilogy and disputation’ was chiefly employed in competitions for profit by the sophists as part of their art of eristic ( Sophist 226a).

The word Eristics is derived from the term

‘rivalry’ ( eris ) since the sophists competed against one another or a prospective client in disputation ( Lysis 211b) employing any verbal trick or captious ‘sophism’ even if reached through false assumptions as exem-plified throughout Plato’s Euthd . (Kneale and Kneale 1964:12–15). Plato thus did not regard eristic ‘rivalry’ as serious philosophy but ‘a game’ in disputation ( Sph . 237b–c) – that is, argument for argument’s sake – and employing antilogy for this purpose (216a, 232b). Although there are many cases where antilogy and eristics should be distinguished (Kerferd 1989:62–5), antilogical eristics were also employed as part of a sophist’s training in order to enhance expertise in the art of persuasion. They were also employed in pub-lic rhetorical displays ( epideixeis ), in which a sophist would give a public lecture contra-dicting or disputing conventionally accepted norms – for example, Gorgias’ Encomium to Helen defends the immorality of Helen of Troy. Since the search for the truth was often secondary to the art of persuasion in

antilogical eristics, the conclusions were often based on an ambiguous, if not on a rel-ativistic, understanding of the goals of phi-losophy (Guthrie 1971a:176–81). Although many scholars have followed the ancients in denigrating Eristics, some have considered it and antilogy more objectively as the first ten-tative steps towards logical thinking (Kneale and Kneale 1964:12).

The relativistic sophist Protagoras was said to have been the first to develop antilogy as a principle of argumentation: ‘there are two arguments ( logoi ) on every theme con-traposed ( antikeimenoi ) to each other’ (D. L.

9.51.13–5). This was probably discussed in his lost work: ‘ Antilogies vols.1, 2’ (54.19;

cf. 9.38) and a surviving text of his school reads:

There are two logoi cited by the philoso-phers in Greece concerning the good and bad, for some claim that the good is one thing and the bad another while others [claim] that they are the same thing for something is good for some but bad for others – and even for the same person it is sometimes good and sometimes bad.

(D. L. 2.90.1.1)

In this quotation from the Dissoi Logoi not only are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ relative, but even the arguments for and against this claim are relative in that they comprise two logoi in the form of an antilogy. Plato later criticized the sophists who wasted their time in ‘anti-logical arguments ( logoi )’ in that they lacked

‘the art of logos ’ to distinguish between truth and the falsehood ( Phaedo 90b–c; cf. 101e).

Since Protagoras maintained that the indi-vidual is the sole ‘measure’ of truth not only for the phenomena but also for the truth of a logos or its antilogos , the decision on which of them is to become the accepted norm depended on a speaker’s power of persuasion

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134 rather than the objective truth of his argu-ments (D. L. 9.51.14–16). While Protagoras might contradict ( antilegei ) accepted social norms and logoi by democratic persuasion, an extreme sophist like Thrasymachus would use antilogical eristic to justify tyranny through the use of fallacy and ambiguous argument ( Republic 343b–4c). The anti-logical method was also used in eristic exer-cise whereby rival students vied with each other to justify the case of either one of the two antilogies. However, as early as Plato ( Phaedrus 261d–e), it was also used in foren-sic training, juridical theory (one must hear both sides prior to judgement) and later in sceptical enquiry (for every logos there is an antilogos ).

Conservatives like Aristophanes ( Clouds 889–1104) and philosophers in the Socratic circle viewed this relative and nonnorma-tive approach as undermining belief in logoi that supported accepted morality since in their view only one of the two antilogies could be true by nature or reason at any one time. Nonetheless, it has been claimed that Socrates’ method of dialectic refutation ( elen-chus ; q.v.) can be seen to be derived from the antilogical methods of the sophists in that he too sought for inconsistencies in the argu-ments of his conversants (Gulley 1968:31).

A method of countering the Sophists was formulated by Antisthenes (q.v. Other Socratics) that each definition and statement ( logos ) can denote only one thing (e.g. ‘gold is gold’) and statements in other terms (e.g. ‘gold is a yellow metal’) are contradictions referring gold to something else (Luz 2000:92). Thus, Antisthenes concluded that it is impossible to contradict ( antilegein ) since each logos refers to a separate entity. Plato recognized that the art of contradiction ( antilogikê technê ) can intrude itself into serious dialectic as well as false eristic especially when the conversants

make generalizations that do not distin-guish between the different species of sub-ject ( R . 454a–b). Besides Plato’s criticism of sophistic contradiction ( antilogikos ) as hav-ing no part in true philosophy ( Tht . 164c–d), he also includes philosophical questioning that contradicts the opponents’ conclusions rather than their hypotheses ( Sph . 225b–d).

This has been plausibly interpreted as a refer-ence to Euclides’ Megarian school (Cornford 1964:176–7) where antilogical paradox was employed precisely for this purpose.

Like Plato, who incorporated the princi-ple of antilogies into his method of diaire-sis (q.v. Method) whereby each species could be divided into a class that is like and unlike, Aristotle’s early logical work ‘ On the Opposites ’ ( peri enantion ) established that it is not contrasting ( antikeimena ) subjects that are syllogies (e.g. wisdom and ignorance) but their definitions that are (Ross 1970:108, f. 3). This however was to be replaced by his doctrine in the Categories where substance has no opposite itself and while the other cat-egories (quality, quantity, etc.) may contain opposites (black and white, heavy and light) they are not opposites in themselves. Just as he treated the examination of sophistic rhetoric in an objective, nonmoralizing way, so Aristotle turned to sophistries, eristics and antilogies in his work Sophistical Refutations , where he drew the distinction between differ-ent forms of logical reasoning (‘syllogism’), for reasoning can be either true or false, but it is the duty of the true reason not only to prove something but also to refute false rea-soning ( Sophistical Refutations 176b29–31).

In the Topics , Aristotle carefully worked out rules by which the dialectical syllogism can avoid this and confute the antilogy ( Topics 105a:18–19). His answer to the Protagorean antilogy ( Metaphysics 4; 1011b23–24) is found in his principle of the Law of the

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135 Excluded Middle ( metaxu antiphaseos ): it is impossible to maintain ( phanai ) and contra-dict ( apophanai ) the same thing in the same relationship at the same time ( Metaphysics 4;

1005b.19–20, 26–34n). However, he did find a use for antilogies in Metaphysics 2 : in order to understand a problem we have to list all of its quandaries ( aporiai ) and arguments pro et contra . There he set forth 14 quandaries of metaphysics, each by thesis and antithesis , but strictly avoided any formal solution for either side. Aristotle, however, did not believe that each thesis and antithesis had equal weight in the end, but that we must attain positive knowledge of a subject by weighing both sides beforehand. In this way he clears the table for his positive apodeictic discus-sion of metaphysics in the following books.

Without the antitheses of bk 2 we would not know which arguments to set aside.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY